Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Picture Time!

Ok, so if anyone wonders how the new set-up is coming along (since May! I know....) I started taking pictures.  Now, these are NOT the pictures that will end up on our website. Those will be taken when the cages have freshly laundered liners, poos vacuumed, and so on and so forth.  These, I took 5 minutes ago, and the cages haven't been vacuumed since Monday morning.  But, here's a little sneak peek....

This is Winx.  He is my first chin, got him back in 2003, which makes him roughly 9 years old.  He is my baby.  He is in a Critter Nation 162, which he usually enjoys both levels of.  He is currently closed off in the top half, as we have some little escapees closed into the bottom half.  He got a pink cage totally by chance -- when the cage came in with the pink liners and 379203 broken bars (which have since been repaired with cold weld), we decided to repair and hang onto the cage rather than sell it, and the first chin who was ready for an upgrade was Winx.  Who knows, one of my adoptive homes said maybe he likes pink.  Maybe he does.  Normally, he gets to enjoy the company of non-psychotic male rescue chins, and for awhile he was living with the white kit shown in the cage pic. 

My "baby," Winx
Winx's CN
We then have Toby.  We got Toby and his half brother Bailey in 2006, from Randy and Jeri Jagielo up in Michigan.  Bailey has proven himself, but Toby has absolutely no interest in fathering another generation, which has earned him the title of "our gay male chin" (said with the utmost love, of course).  Toby was born in 2006, which makes him 6 years old.  Toby used to be paired up with Winx, but then I noticed that Winx wasn't acting himself and wasn't wanting to come out of the hidey house.  Upon pulling him out (this was awhile ago), we noticed that Toby had beaten him up pretty badly.  So, Toby is kept separate.  Toby has earned his pink zebra fleece and it totally fits him.  Christine (Twilight Chinchillas) is going to be making Toby a zebra-bed soon, will post pictures of that when I get around to it.  Bought some fleece today to make a second set of liners for this cage, so I don't have to run and wash the liners without anything to put down to replace them.

Toby (making sure I didn't get any pink in the picture)

Toby's FN

Toby's current fleece

Toby's second fleece set

... and then in the next FN over is Gypsy, our little devil-chin from the Lemlers at Chins by Design. I really do love her, but I may just be the only one, as she has sprayed probably 3 of our recent adoptive homes, unprovoked.  She is a pink white.  I seem to be missing her on our excel spreadsheet of chins *marks down note to add her* so I can't say exactly how old she is, but she's less than a year.  I'd bet between 6-8 months.  She has her own two-level FN, with beige/green/blue striped fleece.  Her spare liners will be beige with a floral pattern.

Gypsy, our little stinker

Gypsy's FN

Gypsy's current fleece.  It's not actually *that* dirty, she just dumps her bowl repeatedly.

Gypsy's to-be spare liners
Our next FN over from Gypsy is one of the rescue FN's.  It has blue tye-dye liners as the first set, and a set of bright blue liners as the second set.  This cage currently houses Psycho as well as a tan female on pregnancy watch.  Currently, the top pan is a cut-out, so these two chins can go from top to bottom, but we also own a second rectangular pan, should the need to split this cage arise.

the blue FN

tye-dye liner

med. blue liner (same color as underside of tye-dye liner)
...and finally, our last FN.  The one most recently done, and the one I decided that I wanted to have kind of a safari theme, so we ended up with two prints in this cage.  I know, I know, the blue cage above has like 6 different prints in it (cause of the various hammocks and accessories, which are all at least partially blue), but this FN is intentionally two patterns that are completely different and don't share color.  This FN inherited our double-decker hidey house from Toby's old cage, as well as our ridiculously-expensive Leo Braun wheel which Shiloh (our prairie dog) refuses to use.  This is one of our rescue cages, and currently houses Delilah.  This is another cage where we have a second top pan -- one without a cutout, should we need to split the cage to house more rescues.  We already have to sets of liners for this cage, a zebra print and a leopard print, but I saw colored zebra print at Joann's today and couldn't not get it.

our safari FN

two liner patterns - zebra and leopard

soon-to-be spare liner pattern
...someone I emailed these pics to already asked, so I will say -- to anyone who sees the orange plaid fabric in the back of that last picture and is hoping that pattern is going to be making a comeback, as it sold out in 3 days last year with a lot of people disappointed they weren't one of the lucky ones to snag one of those hammocks -- that's my fabric that's waiting to be made into a no-sew blanket.  Yeah, since last October.  I'm busy, k?  But it's going to be made before this Halloween, so I can get some use out of it.  Maybe tomorrow.

And here's Delilah in the FN -- 

 
We do have other chins -- we also have Myshkin (extreme mosaic - m), a still-unnamed 3 yr old standard female, Shimmy (std - f), Lilly (std- f), Dreamz (std - f), Bailey (mosaic - m), Nytro (black velvet - m), Joker (std - f), Puff (mosaic - f), Jessie (mosaic - f), and some other rescues, which are not pictured.  The point was to show the new cages, not rehash my entire "our chins" page.

...and our guinea pig cage is also going to be switched over to liners (if I ever get around to making them), with this nice fish pattern:



On that note, we don't have pig pictures on our website, and a lot of people have not seen our pigs, unless you've been here since spring of this year.  So... might as well post some pig pictures.  Their cage practically needs cleanings every 3 days so pardon the mess, it will be cleaned in the morning.

Lacey, our American shorthair female

Truffles, our abysinnian male
...and Pixie, out other American shorthair female.  She is currently still recovering from a spinal cord injury, so she is still separated from the others, but she will be joining them soon.


...and then, we got in another guinea pig yesterday at the rescue, named Chloe.  Well.... my mom wants to keep her, and usually at least one of our females is separated from our male, so if, after quarantine, she get along with our females, we may just have ourselves another pig (so our separated female will have a piggie buddy).  I tell you, this pig is hilarious.  Ok, so few things.  First, I gave her the "end" of the head of romaine... the part at the bottom where all the leaves attach.  The reason I gave that to her was cause last night, after we gave her some basil and carrots, she had wetter poo than I'd like, so I was thinking maybe she wasn't given much greens (or any) at the past home.  They didn't write greens on our surrender form, but it might just ask about what brand of pellets (as our most common surrender should be chins, which don't eat greens).  I'd have to look.  Anyway, so I didn't want to shock her system too badly, so I figured, ok, she'll just pick at the "butt" of the head of romaine (the way our other pigs would just pick off the tasty parts and leave the rest for me to remove later on).  Uh... yeah.  Bout that.  I went down this morning and it is gone.  Lol.  So, that further endears her to this family, as my other pigs are a tad stuck up and won't eat the stems of kale, or the stems of basil, and definitely not (heaven forbid) the butt of romaine, or the butt of any other type of leafy green.  So, if she's a piggie garbage disposal, I won't feel so bad cause I won't be throwing away uneaten parts of the greens. 

So, second thing.  I gave her some greens today, still not as much as the other pigs, and so I put them in her cage.  She is hilarious, I tell you.  She crept up to the greens as if she was trying to steal candy from the candy bowl, grabbed a piece, and hi-tailed it back into her igloo like someone was going to steal it from her.  Her previous home did say that she was in with another pig before that pig died... I wonder if that pig didn't share?  Lol.

Ok, so this pig is orange.  Well, technically, her color would be called "red," but she is orange.  Like a pumpkin pie with some whip cream on top.  So, if she does stay here, she's going to be named Pumpkin.


Pumpkin checking that the coast is clear before going out to snatch the romaine

Pumpkin literally (I shit you not) backing up to get back into her igloo with her piece of romaine
















.... isn't she cute?  She's an American crested shorthair.  I realize her nails are long in the last pic -- that's how they look AFTER we trimmed them.  Don't want to traumatize them too much on the first day by cutting the quick. 

Our baby ratties are growing up.  New pics!

mis-marked variegated

black self

black berkshire

agouti self #1

agouti self #2

agouti berkshire

black hooded

black variegated

black split-capped #1

black split-capped #2
...and finally, a pic of our lone fawn self female.  Supposedly 6 weeks, but we don't have a b-day on her, and she's small.  She could very well be 6 weeks.  My idiotic camera wouldn't focus on her.  It wanted to focus on the ladder.  No, the cage bars!  No, the kitty ball!  So this is a hand-focused pic -- I am proud of this pic, I am apparently getting better at focusing.  I purposely purchased a DSLR that had auto-focus so that I wouldn't have to constantly be messing around with focusing on every picture, but I wanted to be able to turn that off as well, so I could get some of those crisp pics that are impossible to get with an auto-focus.  Love love love this pic.

how can you not love this face?!?
 Ok, and that's it for pictures today.  Time for bed.

2 comments:

  1. This makes me so happy to see that my Chloe aka your Pumpkin is being taken such good care of!It was really tough for us to surrender her, but I feel relieved to know she is clearly being pampered:D We would feed her greens, but she never liked basil. Her favorites are romaine, carrots, apples, and grapes. Yeah our other guinea pig she was with was quite stingy with giving Chloe her food! Sorry we forgot to put on the paper that her brand of pellets is Grreat Choice Guinea Pig Food. Hope all is well. Thanks again for taking such great care of her:) - The Haley's

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    Replies
    1. Hi Amanda!

      She is definitely enjoying it here -- the first few days she'd scurry into her igloo right when anyone came near the cage, but now when I go down there and open the fridge, she's all squeaking to get her veggies and I'm actually seeing her out of the igloo more than she is in it, so a definite improvement. I guess she's decided that I'm not going to eat her after all, haha.

      Oh ok. She very well may have had a bit looser poos the first day as a stress reaction, then, rather than the lack of greens. The majority of rabbits and guinea pigs that we get in have never seen a leafy green in their life... for some reason, we get more of the neglected-type rabbits/guinea pigs, hence my reaction that she may have not had much/any greens. And I did realize that my adoption form doesn't really have a spot for that on there, as it's not written specifically for greens-eating critters, so no wonder it wasn't on there.

      I think so far she's gotten everything you listed except for apples. I will definitely have to give her some next time we have some. Mine aren't crazy about them, but she's always welcome to have some if she likes them.

      If she does end up getting along with our females and we end up keeping her, I can't say our pigs are very fond of sharing either. I fill the bowl with greens and they all go up to it and gorge themselves on it... but I also fill it at least 2 times a day so if they didn't get much earlier, they get more at the later filling. So she'll get plenty no worries. :)

      You did actually give me her bag of guinea pig food, so I did have the brand. We actually feed our pigs Oxbow Guinea Pig, so I've currently got her on a mix of the Grreat Choice and Oxbow so that she can be switched over to Oxbow. That way, whether we end up keeping her or not, we will only be feeding one type of food for all of the pigs.

      No problem, we're happy to have her, she's such a sweetie. :D

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